The SHSAT is not a pass/fail dealio

[conuly]

It is, rather, a zero sum game where by definition not everybody is going to pass the magical, ever-changing threshold score for any of the schools they'd like to attend. Because they're not simply competing against themselves, they're competing against everybody else for a very limited number of spots.

Whether this is good or bad is up for (endless) debate, apparently, but it is never going to be possible for "anybody" to get in so long as everybody believes that. No matter how "easy" you think the test turned out to be for you.

Comments

[conuly]

It's not, though I am in the awkward position of sympathizing with at least two of the children in that case (one who says repeatedly she's "not interested in school" and, probably accurately, determines that her parents only made her go because they wished they'd gone and another who either didn't know what her parents were doing or was browbeaten into it after she failed to get a high enough test score on her own, despite her intention to keep trying until she did). Edit: To be clear, my sympathy with the first is only that she's now famous for being incredibly vapid and silly. Her parents, if they were so determined for her to do college, would've done better to have her to go community college. They would've done better if THEY had enrolled, honestly.

No, I'm still on high school! By law, some schools in NYC require you to take a specific test - the SHSAT - for admission. Those schools are constantly in the news. (They are, quite frankly, overrated, but hardly anybody seems to see that.)